This is Garry Shewan. Or ‘Tubby Bubble Boy’ as he’s known to his mates. Garry is assistant chief constable at Greater Manchester Police. And...

This is Garry Shewan. Or ‘Tubby Bubble Boy’ as he’s known to his mates. Garry is assistant chief constable at Greater Manchester Police. And he feels your pain. Not the sort of pain that involves having your house burgled, or your car stolen of course, because just like every other police force in Britain GMPs detection rate is shit. No, Garry feels the sort of pain that involves news headlines, where he gets to stand in front of the nation’s media in his antispectic uniform, talking all billy big bollocks about crime. The sort of uniform that’s never seen a spatter of blood or a smear of dirt in it’s life. In fact, the only distress it’s likely to encounter is when he pulls the cling film from it too quickly in his eagerness to point his overly round head at whatever TV cameras are waiting for him in the conference room of some fancy hotel.

As with all top cops in Britain, Garry thinks that fighting crime means pleasing the papers. Last time it was ‘Shop A Looter’. Now he’s extending the scope of hate crime: The social experiment to stop criminals from thinking nasty thoughts when they’re out robbing, maiming and killing.

It doesn’t matter that the police have no powers to re-define ANY crime, let alone hate crime (you need legislation for that) the top cops will give it a go anyway. That’s because they see themselves as great leaders, rather than what they are, fifty year old sociology students. Fighting the war on crime one battle at a time. And every battle needs a great leader doesn’t it? Not to inspire the troops of course, but so the top brass know who to chuck the medals and trinkets at afterwards.

Enter Garry Shewan.

Garry Shewan out of uniform

Shewan has perfected the art of talking like a corporate monkey. Making absolutely nothing sound like an awful lot. How else can he justify the 100K plus a year the tax payer throws at him? It sure as hell isn’t going to be breaking up a backstreet fight, or raiding a Moss Side council estate at 5 o’clock in the morning. No, Garry knows where he can fight crime best. From behind his big desk among all his coloured pencils and fancy glitter sprays. Or stood at a podium in a posh hotel. Pretending he’s done something really really special that will give the police extra powers to protect the vulnerable from being persecuted. When all he’s really done is tell the cops at GMP to STOP IGNORING THE HARASSMENT AND PUBLIC ORDER LAWS WE ALREADY HAVE. He then puffs it up with a load of corporate fluff and sails it out with a clever sounding name:-

Alternative Sub-culture Hate Crime

The sort of thing that moistens the groin of sociology lecturers, but smells like yet another chance for the police to make their usual wrong footed petty minded arrests. Meanwhile a contingent of the equally small minded public will be phoning in the name-calling, twitter and facebook insults by the truckload, or just dressing up their allegations with this new classification because they know it’s what will make plod jump.

And as sure as shit stinks you can guarantee that the people least likely to be affected by any of this are the sort of gobby chav scum that ‘inspired’ it.

Garry Shewan preparing crime figure charts for the chief constable.

Being a man of modesty, Garry Shewan called his rebranding of existing legislation as ‘A breakthrough in modern policing.’ Well, almost true. If you consider modern policing for what it is, wet tissue, then it’s a breakthrough of sorts. Because if Shewan is the measure of intellect at GMP then finding anyone there with half a brain to be able to add a sub-category to the incident log computer must have been a real ‘breakthrough’. Sub-categories that any police force in Britain can add to their incident logs at any time. Just don’t expect the judge to give the slightest heed to Alternative Sub-culture Hate Crime when it comes to court, because IT HAS NEVER BEEN ENTERED INTO LAW.

Shewan also claims that this ‘breakthrough in modern policing’ has come as a ‘direct result’ of the Sophie Lancaster case in 2007. Six years ago. Doesn’t sound very direct to me. If anything it sounds very donkey and cart, but typical of the kind of lazy policing we all know and love. No doubt Shewan arrived so late from having to claw his way through the forest of red tape people like him terraformed the criminal landscape with. In all likelihood, Shewan had a headful of his own hot-air and nothing to pin it on. So he went through the archives until he found something that could fill a conference room with press people. And filling conference rooms so his big fat shiny head can be the centre of attention is pretty much all Shewan does. As does EVERY top cop in Britain above the rank of Superintendant.

But if the violent intentions of gobby chavscum are the true precursor to this reawakening of GMPs interest in crimes they’ve clearly been ignoring, then can I submit a list of other ‘Alternative Sub-Cultures’ which should also be afforded the same protection as Goths and Punks when encountering a pissed up gaggle of gutter-class scum who have got nothing better to do than intimidate, insult and deride:-

Anyone wearing a hat, having facial hair or spectacles sub culture

Anyone wearing an unfashionable item of clothing sub culture

Anyone that walks in a funny way sub culture

Anyone carrying a large amount of shopping bags sub culture

Anyone asking them to get off their drive, stop throwing stones at their car or keep the noise down sub-culture

Anyone who looks at them in a funny way or dares to have a go back sub culture

Anyone that chavscum don’t like the look of for whatever reason they decide sub-culture